Jack Kevorkian's apparent involvement in the suicide
of Roosevelt Dawson, a 21-year-old man with paralysis but no terminal illness
(see NRL News, 3/11/98, p. 4) probably helped convince the Michigan House to pass statutory
criminal penalties against assisting suicide. Some had hoped that it would
also bring him to face more immediate legal intervention, but Kevorkian
escaped again.
In the past, Kevorkian has dropped off numerous suicide victims but has
generally shied away from directly admitting specific involvement or leaving
evidence sufficient to demonstrate it definitively. In the case of Dawson's
suicide, however, police seized evidence including a suicide machine, and
there were some indications that because of Dawson's paralysis he would
have had to be killed directly, rather than simply be given the tools to
kill himself. This raised the possibility that Kevorkian could be charged
with homicide, to which consent is never a defense.
However, Kevorkian successfully got a court order requiring that his suicide
machine be returned to him by noon April 1 if he was not charged. The Southfield,
Michigan, police and Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca failed to act
to charge him, and a jubilant Kevorkan walked out with the device. "The
farce is over," he said.